Today the deranged crackpots from the Westboro Baptist Church visited the Boston area.  One of the locations they picketed was Brandeis University, a largely Jewish school in Waltham, Massachusetts.  That is where your intrepid reporter caught up with them this morning.

The Westboro Baptist Church is a small group from Kansas that travels the country picketing at all sorts of events. They have picketed political conventions, sporting events, funerals, and even other churches.  The WBC is an in-your-face group that holds some truly deplorable views.  And they take full advantage of their First Amendment rights to make sure everybody knows those views.

At Brandeis, there were only about 200 counter-protesters.  Some were shouting down the WBC members and were noticeably angered by the presence of the WBC, but many others saw this as a party.

Somebody in the crowd yelled out "I'm a Jew but I'm an antisemite.  Take me with you!" The crowd laughed. A lot of the students were having fun mocking the WBC and generally joking around. I spoke with a young man there named Scott who you couldn't upset if your dropped a bomb on his head.

For me, the levity ended when I spotted three young children there holding signs.  One had a sign that said "God hates Fags" and another was in a red sweatshirt advertising JewsKilledJesus.com.  No matter how bad of a childhood you had, be thankful that your parents weren't members of the Westboro Baptist Church.

The most astute comment of the day came from a young black woman who shouted out "You are not a church community".  That's true.  The entire congregation seems to all have been out sick on the day the "Love Thy Neighbor" sermon was preached.

The Westboro Baptist Church is really just one man named Fred Phelps, his extended family, and a couple of other random nutcases.  The entire "church" has only about 70 people.  There are 2.1 billion Christians in the world, and the number of Christians who disagree with the Westboro Baptist Church's stance is 2.1 billion minus 70.

Let's pray for those 70, and especially for those kids.